


And the War You're Fighting is Underneath

by kimaracretak



Category: Nikita (TV 2010)
Genre: F/M, bb!kgb!amanda universe, implied amanda/nikita amanda/alex and nikita/alex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 01:57:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(i'm a star, you're a star, someone was told to extinguish us): they were going to rule an empire - they will rule an empire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the War You're Fighting is Underneath

**Author's Note:**

> Post-ep for 2x18 "Power," originally written in April 2012

“I let her live,” Amanda says, three year’s worth of bitterness and betrayal seeping into her voice. Not anger anymore, not really, not after seeing Nikita on the edge of death twice. Not after her last word would have been Amanda's name. Now there’s just the regret, the pain, the wonder of how the broken girl she had watched grow into a beautiful woman had also grown so far away. Her fingers skip lightly over the gun and the black box resting between her and Ari on the bed, eyes fixed firmly into the middle distance.

“It’s over now, _dorogaya moya_ ,” Ari whispers into her hair as he pulls her closer. Just the sound of the familiar Russian is enough to make her relax, and she curls into his body, clinging like he’s the only thing she has left in the world.

(He is.)

They had a plan, sixteen years in the making. Sixteen years of clandestine meetings and changing political climates and preparation, all brought down by one girl and one board meeting. (Amanda had loved Alex once, just as she had loved Nikita. But Alex too had betrayed her, chosen Nikita over her, and that had hurt almost more than the betrayal itself.) If she were a different woman, she would have cried. But the years of keeping her emotions invisible have taken their toll, so instead she twists around and kisses Ari, hard.

She still fits perfectly within his arms (she knows he still fits perfectly within hers), like she never left. Like they had never been separated by half a world and two different black ops programs. She kisses him like they’re twenty again in the KGB training dormitories, breaking fifteen written rules and half a hundred unwritten ones (but nobody would say anything, because they’d seen Amanda and Ari work in tandem on the training room floor, and they knew they’d be dead before they got half a sentence out).

The memory makes her smile against his lips and she feels more than hears his murmur of contentment – _I just want to see you smile_ – and she deepens the kiss, slipping her tongue between his parted lips. It’s not like she’ll have much cause to smile again for a long time, she thinks as he lightly bites at her lips, hot and wet and alive. Not until Percy’s dead and Alex and Nikita are –

– Alex and Nikita are memories that don’t bear thinking about right now, because Ari’s hands have worked their way up her shirt and it’s been a long time, too long, since they’ve had time for anything beyond phone conversations and hurried encounters in Moscow hotel rooms. It’s not even like they have time now, with everyone they once counted on hunting them, but Amanda’s determined to make the most of what they have.

(There’s only so long this can last, after all. Either they will win once again or they will burn, burn brighter than the sun and take Division and Gogol and maybe even Nikita and Alex with them. She’s seen enough power grabs – orchestrated enough power grabs – to know that either you succeed or you’re executed. If she and Ari fail – _we won’t_ , she thinks, letting her teeth come out slightly as she kisses her way down his neck, his hands moving up her skirt – she’ll at least have the satisfaction of knowing that she took everyone down with her.)

It’s messy and fast and fearful and she hears the gun clatter to the floor as she presses Ari down onto the mattress. Amanda kneels over him, eyeing him like he's a meal. He says nothing, just looks up at her with the mingled trust and concern that haven't left his eyes since they fled Moscow. And suddenly it's too much for her to handle, and she pulls his hands roughly from under her skirt, pinning them above his head. He doesn't move, understanding her need for control. eEven the recruits – lovely and malleable as they were – didn’t give her this. It’s unspoken, it’s the way their bodies are traced into each other’s memories. It’s the way she doesn’t have to look at what her free hand is doing when it methodically strips him, the way having him inside her still feels –

– _whole –_

– home, and it’s how she lets his hands go when she feels he’s close and how he still knows exactly how to touch her clit to make her come with him. 

After, she tangles her legs in his and skims her thumb over his lips, back and forth, reassuring herself that he's still there. Their plans may have crumbled to ash around them, but those can be rebuilt. They were going to rule an empire - they will rule an empire, they just have to be careful.

“We have to leave soon,” Ari says softly, though he makes no move to get up.

“I know,” she murmurs in reply. “There's places we can go, places I've set up-” One doesn't move against Percy without a backup plan, after all, and she knows at least two of the safehouses are still truly safe.

He nods, shifts closer, tilts her chin up to capture her lips in a gentle kiss. He's never been the nervous one before, but now she feels him shiver against her. “We go after Percy first,” he said, the firmness in his voice belying the tension she feels in his body. She knows it’s because of the black box, which gives them leverage over Percy that they don’t have over the Zetrov board. But behind it, she hears all the things that they never have to say to each other.

They don’t say _i love you._

They don’t say _i need you._

They don’t say _we’ll die together._

They never needed those words; the sentiments were taken for granted and affirmed with tongues that found much better ways to spend time than simply _talking._ But realizing that their secret language still needs no translation, that touches her heart in a way she hadn’t realized she’d missed.

“And after?” she asks, her breath catching as his hand dips lower.

“Zetrov isn’t the only corporation that could use a change in leadership,” he smirks, lips starting to trace the path of his fingers, and it’s so _exactly_ what Amanda wants to hear that she starts to laugh. It’s unexpected and hopeful and there’s a dark undercurrent that’s cold, so cold that Ari thinks it would freeze him if it wasn’t so arousing, if it weren’t for her fingers tangled in his hair pulling him tight against her wet heat.

(No one who knew Amanda would ever think her cold.) 

(No one who knew either of them would think they would settle for less than everything.)


End file.
